The galaxy turned.

I was now over half a year into my stay at Brock Station. At some point, I realized it had become my home. Navigating the rings of the station was now second nature, and I had at least met everyone on the engineering team. Vulka and I had become good friends, since we still worked together whenever he was on roaming duty. I had even begun allowing others to help me with the Benevolence. So far, it was just Vulka and Listher (since I wasn’t the most social person on the station and they both kept pressuring me) but even two extra people on a project as big as the Benevolence was a big deal.

Benni, for its part, surprised me by perfectly playing the part of a standard ship AI. I had forgotten the time it lied to the recovery team, but for some reason, Benni’s ability to act didn’t bother me as much as it probably should have. Other living beings could lie, so Benni had every right to be able to do the same. It was just a matter of trusting it to have good decision making skills, and trusting that it trusted me. 

Work on the Benevolence itself went faster than I had expected. By now, the ship’s systems were all fully operational, save for the engines themselves and the CDrive. We had even managed to acquire a new cockpit and install it without any issue. The engines were where we got stuck. Armor plating? No problem, pull it off some salvage and cut to fit. Need a targeting system for your laser turrets and missile clusters? With some advanced coding, you can reprogram one from another ship to fit yours. The problem with the parts we needed now was connections. Proprietary ones. Listher did his best, but every other engine we looked at just wouldn’t be able to connect to the Benevolence in a safe and secure way.

“Look, finding Ulthean Heartland-Class gunship engines is harder than you think,” Listher said. The Chief’s Assistant was sitting on a crate next to the Benevolence while I riveted the last of the new armor plating to the hull. “I was able to get you the new cockpit because I already knew a guy who had one. The rest of the ship it was attached to is debris somewhere in deep space. What if we just modified the connections?”

I shook my head, firing the last rivet and stepping back to survey my work. “We’d have to modify too much. I’ve seen enough of other Frontier engines to know it wouldn’t work.”

“Then you’ll be docked for a while yet, kid,” Listher said with a shrug. “It’s pretty rare for one of these things to get taken out, much less salvaged.”

That nauseating sense of pride welled in my chest again, and I squashed it immediately. I leaned against the Benevolence and looked at Listher. “What about Pasci engines? You haven’t shown me any of those.”

“That’s because they’re impossible to obtain,” Listher said. The look he gave me was pained as he set his tablet down. “The Pasci are just about the most private engineers I’ve ever met or heard of. No one works on their ships except other Pasci. No one crews them except for Pasci. Somehow, there hasn’t been a single bolt or screw made by the Pasci put on the market, underground or otherwise. Even if they fit perfectly on the Benevolence, I couldn’t get you one of their engines if I sold half my eyes. I’m endangered, remember? You know how much one of these goes for?”

“No, and quit pointing, I get it,” I said, rolling my own eye with a smirk. “What’s their deal? Weren’t they the ones that suggested standardizations in the first place?”

Listher shrugged as he put his hands back down. “You know how it is. Oldest race, best tech. ‘Rules for thee’, ‘you’re not prepared for it’, the usual stuff. They–”

He was cut off as the dock bulkhead opened, and one of the strangest people I’d ever seen slithered through, next to Dr. Skisk. She wore a long and expensive looking head covering over her serpentine head and body (which seemed to just keep going). Six bony arms pulled double duty, gesticulating and pulling her along the ground as she chattered animatedly to the station’s doctor. 

“Oh, is that today?” Listher asked, turning back to look at me. 

I looked back at him with a blank expression. “Was what today?”

Listher and I stared at each other with mounting confusion until he spoke. “Thats. Casey, thats your cybernetics specialist.”

“Oh! Right!” I said, smacking my head. That was today. Excitement filled my entire body at the thought of finally getting rid of these mechanical braces. Of entering zero gravity again. Then, a shriek from the direction of the approaching duo made us both jump.

“You didn’t say they were PaliTech Modulegs Pro™!” 

The cybernetics specialist was suddenly bearing down on Listher and I with the speed and inertia of a rogue asteroid, palms slapping on the ground as her body was dragged behind, occasionally lifting and dropping with a thud to catch up. Dr. Skisk looked shocked, stopping in their tracks. Listher and I both jumped back in surprise. The specialist pulled up short right in front of us, and I finally got a true sense of how big she was. Her body, covered in blue scales, was at least fifteen feet long, and her head loomed a foot and a half over my own, weaving back and forth to get a proper look at me with her blood red eyes.

“Babe, you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to get my hands in a pair of those,” she said, pointing at my legs. 

“Don’t you mean on?” I asked. Her stare was starting to feel uncomfortable.

“I meant in,” she said with a wink, wiggling her fingers. “You’re Casey, then? They call me Cowl, so you can too.”

Nervously, I held out a hand, which she shook daintily in reply. My excitement had faded a bit in the onslaught of Cowl, but I didn’t want to pass judgement yet. With a cautious smile, I said, “Nice to meet you. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.”

“Well of course you have, my schedule is a mess!” she cried. “There aren’t that many of you, but would it kill you Ultheans to stick together a bit?”

I grimaced. “Probably, yeah. It’s a bit difficult when we all have to stay under the radar.”

“Yes, well,” Cowl said, waving a dismissing hand. “Just trying to save on fuel costs, is all.”

“Cowl wanted to meet you before the procedure,” said Dr. Skisk, antennae twitching. I hadn’t even noticed them walking up. “To see what she would be working with. Sorry, I didn’t expect her to get so excited.”

“How could I not?” Cowl asked, head dipping to Dr. Skisk’s eye level. Then she turned it towards me. “The Modulegs Pro™ are a civilian model! Military cybernetics from Ulthea are common as aluminum on starships. I’ve been begging for a civilian to show up at my airlock for ages!”

“Well, here I am,” I said, spreading my arms and dropping them in a tired motion. “Though, I was a UAN mechanic. We just got a civilian model because we weren’t expected to see combat.”

“Don’t care, too excited,” Cowl said bluntly. She reared her head back up. “My ‘office’ is ready if you are.”

I blinked. “Just like that?”

Cowl shrugged with three of her shoulders. “It’s not surgery, babe. Not the meat kind, anyway. No mess, no germs. You’ll be in and out in an hour.”

“Oh, wow, okay,” I said, overwhelmed at how fast things were moving. My grin was somewhere between a nervous and excited one as I looked to Listher, who nodded.

“Go for it, you’re not on the clock,” he said. “You’ve been talking a big game about your zero gee skills, so prove it when you get back.”

I nodded back, a little lost for words, then started towards the ship’s bay door. “I’ll just lock up the Benevolence. We were pretty much done for the day anyways.”

Before I knew it, the mechanical braces were off, and I was sitting in an examination chair within a much smaller ship than I had expected. It was decorated with tapestries and soft lighting, in a manner that reflected how she dressed. Life in space had always been about cleanliness, efficiency. My entire life had been enamel, aluminum, and plastic, and any plant life I saw had only been viewed through display screens. Helga’s office was organic, but this was on another level. It was… nice. Softer. The intricate patterns on everything around me were beautiful and fascinating.

There was a thump, and I looked to see Cowl’s lower body pushed through a beaded curtain, her head following after it. She was calmer now, more composed. Her head still bobbed around as she spoke, but now it was clear she was just trying to maintain polite eye contact with eyes further apart than mine. The smile she gave me was warm and genuine.

“Comfortable, I hope?” she asked.

“I’m okay,” I said, nodding. “This isn’t like my usual cybernetics checkup.”

Cowl ran a scanner over my legs, then checked a tablet she had hung on her shoulder. “I should hope not,” she mumbled. “I’m taking your restraints off, not adding new ones.”

My face darkened. It was still so hard to comprehend the kind of thought that would lead to putting restraint chips inside your citizens cybernetics. The cybernetics that you forced on those citizens. “Why… why would they do this to us?”

Cowl’s expression softened. “It’s all about control, girl. It’s not personal. There’s too many of you to handle with only armed guards and stern words. Have you ever thought about what might happen if everyone on your old station rushed the guards at once? If you tried to take over?”

She had a point. There really weren’t that many guards on the station compared to how many workers there were. “Wouldn’t they just kill all of us, then?” I asked, subconsciously gripping one of my horns. “There’s still the orbital cannons.”

“Of course,” Cowl replied. “But, if they can just press a button and make the resistance stop, they don’t have to waste money building a new station.”

I stared at my legs, eyebrows knotted so tight it almost hurt. It made sense, but it was so cruel. The hurt and betrayal I had felt back when I first escaped hit me like a boulder. Then Cowl poked me in the forehead, and I looked up into a pair of nostrils. 

“Hey. Listen,” she said, before pulling her head back to a more reasonable distance. “You’re out of there, right? You’re taking your legs back. When I’m done, they’ll be yours entirely, and just as good as ever. They lost their grip on you.”

With a sigh, I tried to force myself to relax. “Right. Thank you. At least I’ll have my legs.”

“That’s the spirit!” Cowl said, with enthusiasm. “Now, ready to begin?”